there is a hyphen in there somewhere
As a citizen of the world, I knew the result of the American election would have a profound effect on me, but I never knew it would have the effect it has. Since George W. Bush won his second term in office, I have become completely apolitical.
Political concerns have always been part and parcel of what I am, or was, alas, I have lost faith in the world and human nature in general. I won’t go as far as to say I am now an anarchist, but I would be brash enough to say that we deserve an asteroid. I am a person, this gives me a natural ability and responsibility to care for people, yet as each day goes past, and the more I read the news, the more I find myself loathing what I consider to be idiocy and contempt for our world and environment.
I am not really complaining though, it was easy enough to change – I simply don’t read the political news anymore. I find myself skimming through news for anything important, but admittedly, I don’t really take anything in. People ask me what kind of day it is, I look outside, and if the sun is shinning, it’s a nice day – am I a bad person if I don’t care about bombs dropping on Fallujah, or if the foreign secretary of the United States is a Neo-Con with no Internationalist concerns at all?
It would seem as though with time, as I learn more about the world, the keener I am to distance myself from it. Can I maintain personal ethics whilst becoming completely amoral? Apathy seems like such a nasty and selfish term, am I a pathetic young man? Am I writing this and sharing my thoughts with you to validate my personal beliefs? The less I care about the world; it would seem as though the less I care what the world thinks of me.
This quarter life crisis in ascertaining who I am, or who I will become is lasting quite some time. Some mornings I wake up, and I want to go and help land mine victims in Cambodia or something, but others I wake up and I just ask what the point of helping these people is? All it would do is open my eyes to further pain and suffering. Am I bypassing the chance to mould the world? Is my slowly developing apathy letting the world mould me?
In this age of individuality, it is apparent to me that we aren’t really individuals at all. All this thinking really is a bad past time, because my thoughts only lead to negativity – whilst life is good for me, I can only think about humanity as whole, and how we deserve an asteroid so innocence is born again.
I wouldn’t call it a defeatist attitude; I would just say the balance of my internal power has shifted. I used to be driven by the black and white of right and wrong, yet as I grow older, I worry less about the future, and the realisation that life is one big grey area is dawning upon me. It’s changing who I am, or what I thought I was…
Oh well… no one said life was going to be easy… who cares if I am apathetic? Man, Life is complicated.